A year ago, swimming lessons proved too scary a proposition for Teige Plumley.

This summer, though, he showed up in swimming trunks and a chlorine-soaked T-shirt — and
brimming with newfound confidence.

The 6-year-old needed only a few minutes to demonstrate for instructors at Hilliard East
Municipal Pool how far he’d progressed.

“He was scared to death of the water (last year), but this past year he kind of blossomed,” his
aunt, Tina Taylor, said while watching Teige in the pool.“We knew that he would just go crazy in
the water.”

Throughout central Ohio and other parts of the country, summertime ushers in the season of
swimming lessons — a time when uncounted youngsters are schooled in staying afloat without the help
of water wings or other devices.

Among ages 1 to 4, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning ranks
as the fifth-leading cause of death.

The statistic underscores why the American Red Cross stresses the importance of teaching
children to swim at an early age.

“We encourage people in all households to enroll in an age-appropriate swim program to develop
water-safety swim skills,” said Julie

Smerecki, who oversees lifeguarding, swimming and water-safety programs in several states,
including Ohio
.

“Our swimming programs actually start as young as 6 months.”

The program at Hilliard East — where lesson coordinator Krista Fisher and her staff work to help
children learn to swim like sharks — serves as one example of the myriad opportunities available at
both public and private pools in the Columbus area.

The lessons, which began in June and run through early August, consist of stations. As students
master the skills of a station, they move to the next level until reaching the final station, where
they learn all four strokes and flip turns
.

The classes run Monday through Thursday for an hour a day.

Heather Ernst, deputy director of the Hilliard Recreation and Parks Department, was part of a
group that developed the program several years ago.

“When we were putting it all together,” she said, “the thought process was the natural
progression of the stroke and what was easiest for kids to master — and keeping in mind that all
kids learn differently and kids have different body types.”

The stations start at “seaweed” and finish at “sea shark,” with five steps in between.

“When they (children) go from station one to station two, they have a different instructor,”
Ernst noted. “One instructor might have a way of approaching a child that is a little different
from another instructor. Getting those different points of view is helpful in most cases.”

Teige, son of Michael and Jennifer Plumley of Galloway, became an early success story, working
his way from seaweed to the next level, “sea urchin,” within minutes.

While other children floundered in the 2-foot-2-inch-deep water — some clinging to instructors
like newborns — he dunked his head in the pool like a seasoned veteran.

The sea urchins also proved no match for Teige: Within a few tries, he completed the task of
swimming underwater for five seconds, earning a promotion to “sea turtle.”

His demonstration of proper form earned him extra points from the instructors, who worked to
hold the attention of their young charges, repeating the method tirelessly even as some spit water
out of the pool or jumped into the water.

While some parents chuckled from the sidelines, others used motivation such as high-fives, hugs
or a persuasive “Your sister is going to pass and leave you down here in the lower levels” to get
the kids back on track.

Taylor credited her nephew’s progress to earlier lessons, noting that he had taken four or five
classes but still “had a fear of the water.”

One way to combat such a fear, Ernst said, is to teach the children pool safety — an aim of the
program.

“The ultimate goal . . . is to teach kids how to swim and to teach them how to be safe in and
out of the water,” she said.

The trick, then, is teaching children the fundamentals without boring them.

Aires Ames, a 5-year-old from Hilliard, improved a great deal through the classes.

He seemed especially happy about his mastery of the freestyle stroke.

As he said: “I got to go really far!”

Classes still to come

With some classes already under way, community pools and aquatic centers will continue to offer
swimming lessons throughout the summer. A sampling: